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July 24, 2012

Get to Know: Mindy Hardwick & Weaving Magic

A big PP welcome to Mindy Hardwick! Let's get the inside scoop:

How did you get from your day job to writing romance? I took a leap of faith and trusted a net would appear. I was a middle and high school teacher, and although I enjoyed my students, I kept feeling not quite satisfied. I went back to school for an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and afterwards, left teaching to write. I published freelance articles for about seven years before my books published.

What are your three favorite books of all time?

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein

Homecoming and Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt

Mindy Hardwick

Morning, afternoon, or evening person?Morning

Music--with or without? What kind? Without

First or third POV? First

How's tricks? Do you juggle multiple projects? Lots of multiple projects! Right now, I’m working on drafting the third story in a contemporary romance novella series, drafting a children’s chapter book, and brainstorming for a contemporary romance.

What's harder: beginning, middle, or the end? Middle

Revisions: Love 'em or hate 'em? Love ‘em!

How did you come up with that title? He loves magic and she loves weaving—hence, WEAVING MAGIC.

Fill in this blank:My ideal fictional hero would think me gorgeous no matter…what I looked like in the morning!

What's your favorite dessert?Fudge.

Do you write at home or someplace else? There is a new coffee and crepe shop which opened and is my new favorite place to write.

What's your favorite type of hero/heroine and why? I am a sucker for the bad boy hero. I run a poetry workshop with teens in a juvenile detention, and my main character, Christopher, is bad boy turned good in WEAVING MAGIC.

Excerpt:

Everything would be okay, I told myself. Christopher was my boyfriend. I trusted him. I crunched inside the wicker basket and curled my legs underneath me. I wiped my sweating palms onto my black slacks. The audience stopped calling for an encore. They were so silent I wasn’t sure anyone was still out there.

I’d barely gotten my balance before the first sword barreled into the basket with a lot more force than we’d practiced. Startled, I realized Christopher was keyed up from the magic show performance. He was overestimating the force he was putting behind the swords.

I tried to figure out how to tell him to slow down. I couldn’t very well call out to him or the audience would hear.

Before I could it figure out, the second sword zoomed past me and into the basket. The two swords crossed over my head, and I rearranged myself so I could crouch lower. As I shifted, a third sword whizzed by my left arm and peeled off a small layer of my skin. I saw the blood before I felt the searing pain.

The hardest part about writing WEAVING MAGIC was keeping the two character's story lines intersecting. I had to make sure that when I ended one chapter with main character, Shantel, that the next chapter would pick up with main character, Christopher and their stories would continue to intersect and keep both of them on the page. I learned a lot about plotting writing WEAVING MAGIC!

Hi Mindy and welcome to the Plotting Princesses. I am in awe of your ability to juggle multiple projects. When it comes to writing, I am single minded to an extreme. But I am right there with you on the middle being the hardest part. Best of luck with your writing.

Want this! Reminds me of SEP's scene involving a whip-trick that missed it's intended target and struck the heroine! Very emotional and you know the hero puts a new layer on remorse. Love the interview, of course, and I could just feel the atmosphere of your new writing place.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

Good News:

Liz Lipperman:Her Clueless Cook novella is coming out in December in an anthology with two other cozy authors, Sparkle Abbey and Kari Lee Townsend. Her third Dead Sister Talking Mystery will be coming in May 2015. And in more news, Liz has sold the audio rights to two Dead Sister Talking Mysteries and two others as yet untitled in the series. production has already started. Mega congrats, Liz!

Liese's work-in-progress,A BOTANICAL BLUNDERwon first place in the Southwest Writers' International Contest in the mystery division and finaled in the historical category in the Ozark Romance Writers' Weta Nichols contest.

Also from Liese: She has made available her three former Free Reads from Musa Publishing available through NoiseTrade. You can downloadTEMPORARY TEMPTAATION, TO THE RESCUEandSWEET REVENGEhere.